


Everybody Talks

by Hopeless_1322



Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Insecurity, Jealousy, Kinda Sorta Five Times Fic, Love/Hate, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Pre-Canon, Workplace Gossip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-08 23:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12875418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopeless_1322/pseuds/Hopeless_1322
Summary: It's not exactly a secret that Archer and Lana have one of the most unstable and dysfunctional relationships that the world has ever seen. Seriously, at times they make it look like Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen had a good thing going.Such a delicate situation should obviously be left out of the workplace and the parties involved should be given privacy, but privacy and common decency are two things that don't fly at ISIS.





	Everybody Talks

_Cyril Figgis_ :

When Lana Kane first approached Cyril in the breakroom, he was honestly surprised that she, a highly skilled black ops agent with stunning looks, was actually trying to talk to him, a mousy and meek accountant.

It’s not that the agents never interact with the rest of the staff, but Cyril? He’s only ever approached by Archer when the other man is in the mood to harass and humiliate him.

It was actually a nice talk, pleasantries followed by an intelligent conversation that wasn’t math related, which added some much needed spice to Cyril’s life. He was still, even after returning to his office, completely stunned that Lana fucking Kane had spoken to him.

He was even more shocked the next afternoon when the same anomaly repeated itself, and Lana sashayed in and took a seat next to him with a smile.

Their talks became a regular occurrence and Cyril slowly found himself becoming comfortable around her. Hell, he became so comfortable that he started to think that it was normal for a gorgeous woman like Lana to talk with him….even after she’d been with the likes of Archer on and off again for years.

When Lana asked Cyril out on a date though, he was stunned once again and found himself speechless.

Lana and Archer were currently taking a break (Pam told Cyril earlier; apparently the break-up this time was once again due to Archer’s infidelity) but still, she wanted to try going out with someone else? Not even any ‘some else’ but _Cyril?_

How the hell could Cyril decline an offer like that? He agreed and they went on the typical junior-high first date; dinner and a movie. It was enjoyable and slightly awkward, as Cyril really hadn’t been in the dating game for quite some time, but it went well.

They’ve been officially together, boyfriend and girlfriend, for two months now, and Cyril is admittedly a little disappointed that the whole thing isn’t going quite as smoothly as it started out.

The problem with their newly christened relationship? Sterling Malory Archer.

It’s not that Cyril didn’t expect Lana to come without baggage. Hell, anyone who’s been with Archer in a more intimate way than a one night stand must end up pretty emotionally fucked, but Cyril has come to the conclusion that it’s not just Lana’s broken heart that has her paranoid and high strung.

She still loves Archer, and Cyril honestly worries that he’ll never measure up. Not wishing to sound insecure, Cyril never voices these concerns to Lana, but in a way, he feels that he doesn’t have to. 

He knows that he’s not wrong to worry just a little bit.

Is he just a little fling for Lana? Someone to keep the bed warm until Archer comes tumbling back into it?

It doesn’t help that Lana spends so much time ranting about what a shitty boyfriend Archer was either, as it shows that she really is still hung up on her past relationship despite continuously claiming that she isn’t.

_“He always managed to drive me fucking crazy! Always lying to me and acting like he hadn’t done anything wrong!”_

__

__

_“I don’t mean to be so pushy and nosy, it’s just...I have some serious trust issues after everything Archer put me through. Did I ever tell you about the time he I walked in on him boning the waitress from the restuarant we’d eaten at earlier that night?”_

_“You’re perfect, Cyril! You and Archer have nothing in common, that’s what makes you so great.”_

That last line really hits Cyril like a fucking truck every time Lana says it, even though he knows she only ever says it to try and reassure him. Yes, he’s not Archer, but finding someone completely unlike your ex to get over them? Going against your own type to spite the man who broke your heart?

It makes Cyril feel a hell of a lot like a rebound relationship and makes his sense of insecurity sky rocket. It’s gotten so bad at this point that every time he and Lana have sex he’s half expecting her to cry out Archer’s name instead of his, as pathetic as that sounds.

Cyril Figgis loves Lana Kane, loves the idea of being with her, but he doesn’t think the feeling is mutual.

“Jesus, you look miserable,” Pam observes aloud one morning as Cyril watches Lana and Archer loudly argue with one another in the middle of headquarters. “And, Jeeesus, do they look like two cats in heat!”

Cyril frowns and mumbles to himself, crossing his arms over his chest. Pam easily picks up on his agitation and gives him a nudge in the ribs.

“You worried that she’d still bone him if she had the chance? Because if you are, I can’t blame you.”

“N-no!” Cyril responds, shooting the HR head a heated glare. “I trust Lana, and she says that she’s over Archer. They’re just still a little…”

“In the mood to have hot makeup sex on the office floor?” Pam offers with a shrug.

“Lana doesn’t want to have sex with Archer!”

“Okay, okay!” Pam mutters, putting her hands up in surrender. “Jesus, Cyril, no need to get your man panties all up in a bunch! Sure, your girlfriend totally doesn’t still have the hots for Archer, happy?”

Cyril huffs, watching Lana give Archer a shove and jab a finger in his face, continuing to berate him for his arrogance and carelessness. “You...you don’t really think that Lana would cheat on me with Archer, do you?”

A look of pity washes over Pam’s face and, rather uncharacteristically, she hesitates to respond.

“I don’t think she’d sleep with him, but, I gotta be honest with you, I think she’d dive right back into his bed again if you weren’t in the picture. So...don’t worry about her cheating.””

“But I should worry about her wishing that I was him?” Cyril asks with a dejected sigh, his worst fears finally being confirmed by someone else. 

“I don’t think she wishes you were him, I think she’s using you as a distraction,” Pam says, giving her coworker a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You’re, like, anti-Archer in her eyes, you know? It’s kind of like when a chick goes from dating the a bad boy who has tattoos and a sexy motorcycle to the dweeby guy who’s studying to be an archeologist and owns a stamp collection. You see what I’m saying here?”

“It’s a coin collection, not a stamp collection,” Cyril mumbles with a look of hurt, feeling even more inadequate than before. 

“Sure it is, buddy,” Pam says with another consoling pat to the shoulder. “Sure it is.”  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Malory Archer:_

Despite her cold, calculating exterior, Malory does genuinely care about and love her son. Part of this hidden love for her boy includes wanting only the best for him, and Agent Lana Kane is not, in her eyes, the best thing for Archer.

It’s not that Malory has a problem with Miss Kane as a person (despite her outlandish liberal views), but she never wants her son getting involved with a black ops agent.

Being a former black ops agent herself, Malory knows the physiological and emotional barriers that must be built in order to keep sane. Malory also knows that it takes a certain mindset that’s borderline bipolar or sociopathic to be successful in such a field, not that she’d ever say so aloud.

When Malory happens to overhear Cheryl and Pam gossiping about Lana asking Cyril Figgis out one afternoon, she can’t help but feel almost giddy with excitement. _Yes!_

If Lana has finally found interest in someone else besides Sterling, perhaps their destructive relationship’s circle of life will finally come to an end.

To ensure this, Malory decides that she must foster this budding romance between Cyril and Lana, must oversee their relationship like a chaperone at a high school prom. 

Malory also needs to ensure that her son doesn’t ruin things between Lana and her new boy toy. Sterling needs to be distracted while Cyril and Lana’s romance takes off, so Malory assigns her son an obscene amount of training sessions and any mission that she can. It seems to work for quite some time, Archer being too busy feeding his own ego to notice Lana’s changed relationship status.

But, alas, despite Malory’s skills in deceit and playing her cards to her advantage, she is not able to hide a workplace relationship from her son forever. When Archer finally finds out about the relationship, from Lana herself nonetheless, things get rather messy. 

Malory hates messes.

Archer bellyaches to her about his heartbreak two evenings after he finds out, drunk enough to forget himself and show emotion. 

He rants, raves, and cries. If he were sober Malory would kick him out and tell him to go home to sob like a child, but seeing her son so vulnerable...it admittedly gives her great joy. This emotional breakdown, this hurt, it proves what Malory has been trying to tell her son since he was a child.

It proves that she is the only woman that Archer can trust, that she is the only woman who truly loves and values him. 

So, instead of mocking her full-grown boy for his tears and telling him to grow up, she sits down next to him on her living room floor and holds him in her arms, running her fingers through his hair and gently shushing him.

If Malory ever finds a woman that she deems perfect for her son; safe, loving, and perfect, she’ll let her baby go. But for now, all Malory can do for her son is hold him close and help him grieve the loss of his turbulent relationship with Lana Kane.

Black Ops agents don’t do well with love, Malory knows this all too well, but she’s going to do her best to ensure that Lana and Cyril have her blessing, just to shelter her son, whom she knows she had neglected to a detrimental degree as a child. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Pam Poovey and Cheryl Tunt:_

Cheryl stares at the black computer screen, drumming her nails off of the desktop as she attempts to figure out how to turn the damn thing on. Usually if she hasn’t gotten it up and running by noon Pam or Ray will cave in and turn it on for her, today looks like one of those days.

“Hey, skin and bones,” Pam greets, stopping in front of Cheryl’s desk to set down a thick stack of newly printed calendars for the month’s staff events and meetings. “You figured out how to login yet?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes. “I’m getting there, Miss Giganotosaurus.”

“You want me to do it for you?”

“No,” Cheryl insists, continuing to pointlessly press random keys on the keyboard and humming inanely. “I’m a big girl...just not like you.”

Pam rolls her eyes in annoyance but doesn’t reply, letting Cheryl have her moment of victory. “Yeah, yeah… Hey, have you seen Lana yet today?”

“Lana? Uh….no. Why?”

“She’s really fucking pissed!” Pam whispers excitedly. “Her and Archer were, like, duking it out in the break room this morning.”

“Ooh! Really?”

Pam snorts and nods. “Yeah, I guess even his mere presence sets her off these days, because from what I could tell, he didn’t even open his mouth before she walked up to him and smacked his cup of coffee out of his hands.”

“Did she, like, bitch slap the coffee or deck it?” Cheryl asks eagerly, leaning across her desk. 

“Nah, it was just a little bitch slap.”

“Aw,” Cheryl huffs as she slumps back in her seat, clearly having had hoped the altercation was more intense. “Too bad.”

“It was still pretty good, especially since, from what I could see, it was pretty much completely unprovoked.”

“It’s all of that pent up sexual tension,” Cheryl deduces with a firm nod. “They’re just, like, dying to rip each other’s clothes off and have a nice, long hate fuck to satisfy their desires. They’re addicted to each other, Pam, they need each other like a college girl needs angel dust.”

“I was always more of a speed kinda girl myself,” Pam admits with a shrug. “I see what you mean, though. Seriously, they were eye-fucking the hell out of each other!”

Cheryl giggles into her cupped hands. “How long do you think it’ll be before one of them cracks and gives into their carnal desires?”

“I’d give it a month or two. Poor Cyril, he’s really praying that Lana loses the hots for Archer so that their little fling works out.”

Cheryl snorts and shakes her head. “No. Lana Kane will always be an Archer Sterling girl, she’s obsessed with him, there is no other man that will ever measure up to him in her eyes. She just doesn’t realize it yet. Cyril’s literally just, like, a boy toy to tide her over until she doesn’t want to rip Mr. Archer’s head off.”

“Cyril wants it to be more than that though,” Pam points out with a click of her tongue.

“Well, duh! Of course he does! But just because he wants to be with Lana doesn’t mean it’s gonna work out. I really wanted to be with my college boyfriend, like more than anything in the world, but it still didn’t work out.”

“You mean the quarterback?” Pam asks flatly, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yeah.”

“He wasn’t your boyfriend, you were just his creepy stalker!”

“He was too my boyfriend, and we were in love! We were gonna have beautifully photogenic athlete babies!” Cheryl yells angrily, shoving Pam’s stack of papers off of the desk in her rage.

“Hey, you little bitch!” Pam cries indignantly. “Pick these up!”

Cheryl simply snorts and continues clacking away on her keyboard. “I can’t, Pam, I’m really busy. I guess you’ll just have to pick it up yourself.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Ray Gillette:_

Ray loves Lana, he really does. She’s one of the few agents that he can tolerate and she’s got a perfectly sick and twisted sense of humor. If he were straight, or even bisexual, she would totally be someone he’d willingly go out with.

But despite Ray’s unconditional, platonic love for Lana Kane, he has to admit that her and Archer’s roller coaster of a relationship grinds down on his patience big time. 

It’s not that Ray is unsympathetic, no, he gets it. He’s been in his fair share of ugly relationships himself, but the fact that Lana continuously goes back to Archer and rekindles what they had going...it’s honestly just idiotic. 

It’s a cycle, Ray’s learnt, Archer and Lana have a cycle.

They’ll fall in love with each other again because, for some bizarre reason, they just have a sick magnetism that continuously brings them back together, and stuff will go smoothly for some time. Then Archer, being Archer, will do something insensitive or downright jackass-esq, Lana will get angry, they’ll have a fucking war, and….then comes the inevitable break up.

It never ends, no matter what stage of the cycle Lana and Archer are currently in.

If they’ve just broken up, Lana is completely besides herself, beyond pissed off and in the mood to rant about everything Archer’s ever done wrong for hours on end.

If they’re together, it’s more bearable, and she’ll only occasionally bring up that she naively thinks ‘maybe it’ll work out this time’.

If they’re on the verge of getting back together, Lana will voice the pro’s and cons of getting back together with Archer but no matter how much Ray warns her against doing it, she always does anyway.

The cycle is vicious and unrelenting.

Ray has come to terms that Lana will never take his advice when it comes to her and Archer, but no matter what happens, he genuinely hopes that she ends up happy, whether Archer’s in the picture or not.

He knows that she’s not currently happy, pining over Archer in an almost teenager-like fashion whilst stringing Cyril along like a little toy duck. It’s not that Cyril’s a horrible choice, he’s nice enough if not a bit clingy, but...he’s not Archer. Every Time Lana laments to Ray about why she thinks her and Cyril just aren’t clicking, he wants to point it out.

It’s because Cyril Figgis is not Sterling Archer.

But Sterling Archer is bad for Lana, they bring out the absolute worst in each other. As Ray likes to so eloquently put it, Archer is the sweatpants to Lana’s Uggs.

It’s almost romantic in a sick twisted way, Ray thinks, as for some reason, against all odds, Lana always, ALWAYS ends up back with Archer at the end of the day. No matter what he did, not matter what she said, they always end up together on the other side.

They’re like some sort of tragic figures in a tale of mythology, just without all of the icky incest. 

Lana needs Archer, and Archer needs Lana. Neither of them will ever say it because they’re so fucking stubborn, but they do. 

Ray’s just waiting for the cycle to end, no matter what stage it ends at.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Algernop Krieger:_

Archer sure likes to talk and, for reasons beyond Krieger’s understanding, likes to spend time lounging around in the laboratory talking to him. 

Krieger really doesn’t mind Archer’s presence, as any human presence in the lab is always more than welcome, but he honestly doesn’t understand why the agent always decides to vent all of his problems to him.

Doesn’t Archer have any friends to talk to about his problems? His mother is the boss after all, why doesn’t he bring up his issues with her?

Archer claims that Krieger is great at giving advice, but Krieger doesn’t necessarily agree. He usually just points out the obvious or lets Archer continue to rant and rave until he comes across a solution himself. Krieger doesn’t even talk half of the time, he just sits there and watches Archer pace around the lab, waving his arms around and shouting.

For the last few weeks, everything Archer’s bitched about has either been about his mother (the usual) or Lana Kane (also the usual). But Lana and her new boyfriend Cyril seems to be what’s really weighing on Archer’s mind lately, as he gets especially enraged when he discusses the topic with Krieger.

_“Like, Cyril?! Seriously?! How can she go from being with me to Cyril?! Should I feel insulted or what?!”_

_“Can you believe that she’s still with him? She must be really desperate, huh? Cyril Figgis...Jesus, Cyril’s like...the lowest of the low for a rebound score, you know?”_

_“I bet Lana’s on the verge of just begging me to take her back. I can tell, she looks like shit, you know? Bags under her eyes, looks like she could kill someone...either she’s miserable or on her period.”_

Krieger listens to Archer’s complaints and rants (sometimes taking notes of what he says to study and help him understand humans a little better), but Krieger honestly can’t help but think that part of Archer’s problem is that he’s incapable of letting Lana go.

Whether or not Archer is willing to admit it to himself, Krieger’s fairly certain that the man is helplessly in love with Lana, but that he unfortunately doesn’t have the emotional capacity to appropriately express his affections towards her.

If Archer could get used to healthy, normal relationships, Krieger believes that Lana and Archer could have a successful relationship.

Cyril infuriates Archer because the accountant has what he wants, he has Lana.

Krieger’s noticed that Archer has become downright hostile towards Cyril since he and Lana became public with their relationship. He’s angry, hurt, and jealous as hell. Once again, if Archer could just deflate his ego enough to talk to Lana like a mature adult, things could possibly work out in his favor.

But that’s just what Krieger thinks, and Krieger is admittedly completely clueless when it comes to relationships, platonic or romantic. What the hell does he know?


End file.
